August, Autumn and Bali

The SFIGf came and went. It was a grueling show and to be honest, I do not know how productive.
It was however a lesson in wholesale for me and riding BART. Two crates and the card spinner loaded onto a dolly very nicely. And I took transit every day of the four the show was running. No parking fees, low gas use and no commuter headaches. The handmade section was relegated to a little corridor in the back, next to the cash and carry at the back of Moscone West. The backdrop to the show was the stock market plunging several hundreds of points. Frankly, I find the stock market coverage to be an exercise in manipulation, subjective speculation and a big bloody waste of everyone's time. One of my coworkers, who is just entering jc talked about watching the Colbert Report and Stewart for all of his news and that one of the guests had said, 'the stock market rests on the emotions of CEOs each day.' Great, like I need to know how 500 strangers are feeling about their morning and afternoon.

That was an aside...
I have quite a lot of follow up to do from the show. Still in the works is a conversation begun with a couple card reps. This is an ongoing discussion about retail display suggestions and price points....which actually might take me back to talking about economies, foreign manufacture and American consumer expectations.

My production process continues to be refined (no corn syrup here)
I have become more proficient at creating "stable" designs with delicate cuts and patterns.
Because of the discussion about price points and what a "card" is, I came up with a medium/invitation-sized foldout. I like this size, it has the intimacy of the enclosure and larger format views of the A2.
I will post to my shop soon.
Sunday and I am on my way to work.
ciao bella, more later,

August, return to habit or ritual and summer show

Currently prepping for the SF International Gift Show, which is this coming weekend. I should be working on collateral materials......this is a trade/wholesale show, which means that I do not have to have a lot of inventory but everything does have to be well documented.
I have not done this kind of show before. My best frame of mind seems to be to approach it as an experiment albeit with a ton of preparation....the hold up is almost always around making decisions as I really do like to let things gel a little. what I really want to be doing right now (confession) is to go work on the veiled chameleon foldout started some time ago. It's beginning to take shape and will be very colorful with a fairly good view of the little guys in habitat.

The Flea Market blog has been set aside for the time being, mainly because I am working on the weekends these days and can't attend except vicariously. And each person does notice different things.
Back to prep.
Adios for now,
Papercuts

Bones & Pearls

This papercut is 8-1/2 x 11 and velvety black. I photographed it on a textured blue glass plate, shown below. This is informed by the whole concept of mudras, which have a basis in yoga and are another way of arranging the body to focus the mind. Everyone has a different way of putting things. I remember being in a yoga class and the instructor said that the spinal cord is like a string of pearls, that together with my infatuation with marine life and the ocean is the basis for this stream-of-conscious papercut. I'm calling it "stream" because it came out of a drawing scribble and evolve into the image on the left. A spinal column framed by hands entwined with pearls, ribbons of kelp and the odd fish. I feel the seahorse is a little too cartoony so am planning to do another one and continue with a series, called Mudras.

Yes, it is Monday. That means...

yesterday was Sunday, flea market day.
The flea market is a crap shoot.
You go, you find and you buy crap.
But sometimes, especially if you approach the whole endeavor with...dare I say, "right thought", you score.
And because everyone is looking, you are all in competition with one another and kind of looking together.
Okay, yesterday. I'd decided that I was going to buy an item each week that I would incorporate into my bookmaking enterprise.
Just a word of explanation here: I mean bookmaking in the sense of book arts...okay?
and if you aren't familiar with this term, check out donnaseagergallery.com (awesome!)
So this Sunday, I had purpose.
Dennis and I paid our $1.25 entry fee (That alone is a bargain. Where else can you go for only a buck twenty five?) and headed to the right, over the drive-in movie hillocks towards a car that was parked perpendicular to the rows. D's first comment was that this guy didn't know what he was doing. As we approached, he took a box from his car, set it on the table at the front of his vendor spot and immediately a layer of people were looking, scooping and buying then he was taking another box out of his car. He never had a chance to unpack. People were buying stuff right out of the box. And a lot of these people were other vendors and regulars. Definitely something was going on. I stayed to figure it out. D took off.

A word about the flea market. There's a lot of stuff -categories and individual items that turn up on a regular basis.

There are individual items that keep repeating week after week. I saw the same waffle iron for six months, didn't see it yesterday so maybe someone finally bought it. There are themes or trends or maybe someone made a request to the Universe and I just happened to tune in. dunno.

He had fabrics, books, dishes and there was something unique about everything. The pelt was a kangaroo skin; the books were old. This is what I bought from him:
(to be continued)

Tuesday, stale popcorn and the dog

I opened an etsy shop for the dog(that's Yogi) yesterday. He is going to supply those felters with gen-U-whine Bouvier hair...or is it fur?
My friend, K8 sent me a link to a book about crafting with your cat and inside apparently, since I've only seen a photo of the book cover (and don't know a damn thing about felting) is a recipe for felting using cat's hair....or is it fur?
So far, I only have one sandwich baggy-full of doggy fluff. Usually it's like tumbleweeds everywhere -under the chairs, under the couch, in wads on the carpet or layering into the corners.
In addition, I'm thinking Sydney, one of my cats can subcontract to Yogi. He sheds almost as much and has medium-long black coat that sticks to the blankets in little tufts.

Why the reference to popcorn? We took a break and ate some.
cheers

The Art of Promise Keeping

My friend, Lindl recommended the Book Thief awhile ago.
And I read the first couple chapters but for some reason didn't finish it.
Last week, I found it in the library on CD. (I think an audiobook counts as a read.)
It is very good....and sad. It makes me sad thinking about it but it isn't a depleting sadness and it's the kind of book that you reread in your mind's eye. Beautifully and visually written.
Death is the storyteller, always mentioning the colors, the colors of things, the sky, the water, the color of Hans Huberman's eyes, silver with kindness...

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

Resurrecting My Blog and Habitat

hi! Daily Papercut is back...I stopped writing here for awhile because my focus had become our Sunday forays to the flea market. Though THAT is still interesting to me it is not the focus of this blog. The Daily Papercut's purpose is to provide a "back story" for some of my pieces and my creative process in general. In my own experience, I enjoy others' work more when I know something about it and what they're thinking about. It is not an attempt to "talk a picture," as one of my teachers once discouraged me from doing but to simply inform so you can enjoy the work more.
As for the Mercado de las Pulgas that's for another blog....link appearing soon.

I love animals and habitat. If you enjoy this aspect of my illustrations then next time you are in SF you've got to visit California Academy of Science. Wow!
I went there to recharge my creative battery this past week. It was a visual feed-very inspiring, very interesting and of course, more ideas to get to work on....rays, sea dragons, penguins, octopus, otters....habitats underwater, rainforest canopies....lots of inspiration....the natural world is so beyond anything the imagination can manufacture and it all has such an integrity in its forms.
Visit!
(note about the foldouts: these are now in a size that fits standard A7 envelope; earlier "standard" size I'm  calling  "foldout-mini" or mini. Open, the foldouts can now work as a centerpiece especially if the party or event has a theme. I am working on a set of luminarios....more on this very soon. Also new, to my etsy webshop, are large-format, limited edition paper cuts, as large as 24x18. I'm really excited about these and the ACEOs because it gets me back to my art and printmaking roots. The paper is luscious stuff, gorgeous and thick and it is, like the inks, archival....kind of like someone telling you they are baking with 100% vanilla, cocoa beans, locally sourced fruit and handmilled flours.... your mouth has to start watering...yup, good ingredients. Now on eBay as hanasales.)